Watch above: A Sask. firearm advocate who campaigned for the Conservatives for years, is now accusing the prime minister of betraying gun lobby. Calvin To has Edward Hudson’s story.
SASKATOON – Heated reaction is taking place on the heels of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s comments regarding gun use in rural areas.
“My wife’s from a rural area,” Harper said at the recent Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities convention in Saskatoon. “Gun ownership wasn’t just for the farm. It was also for a certain level of security when you’re a ways away from police, from immediate police assistance.”
The prime minister later added he did not mean that people should be taking the law into their own hands. Still, reaction was swift from proponents of gun control.
“So this whole idea that you are far from a police station, which is what he said in that very bizarre comment of his, so there for you might have to arm yourself and use your weapons against other human beings,” said NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair.
“Police across Canada have denounced that, the bar associations across Canada have denounced that, I’m happy to see the prime minister is now backing away from it, which was an incredibly ill-considered statement by Stephen Harper.”
READ MORE: NDP leader shoots down Harper’s comments about people who arm themselves
The prime minister is also drawing criticism from some in the gun lobby.
“He has betrayed us,” says local gun advocate Edward Hudson. “He does not deserve our support.”
Hudson has been campaigning for the federal Conservatives for 15 years, and at the same time trying to change the laws regarding gun ownership in Canada. He openly owns and uses firearms without a license, and often encourages police to charge or arrest him.
Yet he is unhappy with the Conservatives’ record on gun control. He says the Tories backed away from a promise years ago that they would do away with the law requiring licensing for the purchase and possession of firearms, and adds that he isn’t buying the prime minister’s words.
“It just seemed like so much baloney,” Hudson says.
“And as I say, it’s green baloney. Because baloney’s good, but not the baloney he’s selling,”
Hudson says he wants to see this government replaced with a Liberal-NDP coalition, if anything, in order to punish the Tories for what he labels poor treatment of the gun lobby. In the meantime, he will continue breaking the law, hoping to get charged with a firearms-related offence so he can take his cause to court.
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